Leave a comment

We want to know your opinion on this issue! While arguing about an opinion or idea is encouraged, personal attacks will not be tolerated. Please be respectful of others.

The editorial team will delete a comment that is off-topic, abusive, exceptionally incoherent, includes a slur or is soliciting and/or advertising. Repeated violations of the policy will result in revocation of your user account. Please keep in mind that this is our online home; ill-mannered house guests will be shown the door.

Wonder if they will have Juin Baize character in the movie. Ze was the trans girl who was expelled for wearing womens clothes which prompted Constance to wear a tux which was part of the problem the school had.

Nicole, i have no doubt they will NOT have much about Juin in the movie, even though his story (he's IDing as male these days) is the entire core of the story.

Juin Baize was basically blackballed from the same high school before he could even really attend. Constance was a friend of his and her and a number of other queer positive kids were going to protest Juin's treatment by crossdressing at the prom. The administrators were more concerned about crossdressing boys than her wearing a tux (she normally isn't even butch in expression) but wanted to make a case out of her situation before they thought it would get out of control. And, as I'm seeing this story about the film reported, I'm noticing that virtually every mention of it leaves out this entire central component.

Btw, Juin tells me he's moving to Seattle and is going to try and finish high while there. He has a boyfriend he's very close to and has lost nearly a year out of high school from all the drama he's encountered in Florida and Mississippi. He's a sweetheart and I really wish all the organizations which used Constance's story for PR would have given a damn about this young person who got an even tougher deal than Constance did.

Hi Gina,
Thanks for the update on Juin.
I have been worried about that kid, and figured Juin endured a lot already.
That in itself is a kind of activism. Of COURSE Juin is a good kid, that was easy to tell.

I know at least one of those orgs you refer to did give a damn and was ready, willing and able to provide Juin with any and all support that they could. As has been documented elsewhere, Juin decided it was a better choice, personally, to find a more accepting community rather than stay in Fulton and fight. I don't think it's fair to fault the orgs that helped Constance for that.

Juin didn't really plan on living in Mississippi. He moved there after he had problems and bullying at his school in Florida. The kid had already been through hell... you make it sound as if he should be criticized for not being a community activist?! Constance a lot of help from the get go. She got immediate major media coverage (Juin got zilch). She got scholarships, help from Ellen and appeared at GLAAD award shows (Juin got none of those things). Juin, the one who really had a much worse situation than Constance did (and I give her HUGE props as a friend, young person of character and for being sympathetic to what he went through).

But most importantly, Juin's key part of this entire story was whitewashed from most of the media covering it (including queer media) and they replaced it with a fictitious version of "Constance wasn't allowed to bring a girl to the prom." And the more they wrote about it, the less they seemed to care if it was even true.